


The Tale Of The Lubricated Mannequin, Or, That Time Serena Campbell Woke Up Married (Again).

by CommanderInChief



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Lubricated Mannequin isn't quite as weird in context I promise, Past Relationship(s), Secret Relationship, Vegas AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9641282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderInChief/pseuds/CommanderInChief
Summary: "Tell me, was Elvis present for this particular occasion or is he strictly reserved for a couple’s first brush with matrimony?"Vegas AU.





	1. Tequila And Lemon

****

Alcohol.

They should ban the stuff, really. The clear paint-stripper liqueur that burns out the back of your throat right down to the sticky sugar-syrup in some luminous shade of fuchsia pink or electric blue. She could still feel the fumes, stale and sloshing about in the back of her mouth– God, it made her head throb just thinking about it.

Moment she gave up good old Shiraz for one of those sad alcho-pop things was a dark one indeed.

Opening her eyes, it was moments before the thick nausea came crawling up her throat.

And there, firmly wedged into her finger, was a tacky ring, not heavy enough to be gold, the garish great gemstone reflecting sunlight in a way that made her head throb. Serena could've sworn she'd never seen the ring before in her life.

If only the same could be said for the blonde snuggled against her side.

"Oh for God's sake! Not again."

That was the point at which Serena ran out of bed and was promptly sick into a nearby U-bend.

A suspiciously well-built shadow appeared in the doorway. She could feel the smirk.  

“Good night, love?”

Another chunk of sick formed in her throat.

“Oh, shut it,”

Breaking the vomit-and-mini-dress land-speed record aside, the universe really did owe her an uneventful day from there on in. But, of course, after the everlasting delights of the walk of shame (somehow, telling the taxi bloke that she’d spent the night at her wife’s house, thank you very much please thank you, didn’t make that sound any better), she unlocked the doors to the AAU showrooms and lounge to find that not only was every bloody twinkle light and main-beam turned firmly on but the main culprit, a smug Swede, was already quite happily helping himself to a morning whiskey.

"Ms Campbell, to what do I owe the pleasure?" He asked, as if he wasn’t midway into breaking and entering, with a side dish of theft. _Not that he wouldn’t be able to talk himself out of it_ , jammy sod.

“Says the man in my bar. How did you even get in here, anyway?”

“You left a key underneath our friend in the doorway.”

Serena ground down on her teeth. In her defence, the bin men were supposed to have taken away their _friendly neighbourhood_ mannequin last Tuesday. She had to admit though; the thing did have a certain charm about it. Good place to put keys.

“Well maybe if our site management slash bouncer would actually turn up to work _on time_ then I wouldn’t have to have a spare key for my performers to get into the dressing room,” From the hand motions alone, Hanssen could tell she was about to strangle someone, “I told you hiring one of those ex-military lot would be nothing but trouble.”

“Yes,” He became in a tone that reminded her of the pompous headmaster back in secondary school when he told her that _apparently_ , burlesque dance wasn’t an adequate sport for a Duke of Edinburgh bronze award, “Although, if I recall correctly, no one was holding a gun to your head when you made the decision to hire her. In fact, if one didn’t know better, they might almost be mistaken into believing that you were really quite taken with Ms Wolfe.”

“Yeah-” She sighed- “About that…”

“Fourteen missed calls from this morning alone would suggest that you are about to ask for a rather personal favour.”

"Don't flatter yourself. I need a divorce - and a quiet one at that."

If she didn’t know the man well enough to know that he had a firm grudge against fun in all of it’s various forms, Serena might have almost thought that the odd quirking of his face was a smirk, "Forgive me but I do not recall our marriage."

"Oh, shut up, you know what I mean."

He took a sip of his whiskey, eyebrows still raised, "To whom shall I give my congratulations?"

It was almost artful, the grace with which Serena lifted the heavy glass decanter in one, manicured hand before taking a long swig of honey-brown. What was that she was saying about alcohol? Ah well, there was always new-year’s for resolutions she had no intentions of sticking to.  "It's Berenice bloody Wolfe."

"The second time in so many years, if I recall correctly. Tell me, was Elvis present for this particular occasion or is he strictly reserved for a couple’s first brush with matrimony?"

"If I say he was will you get on and do the bloody paperwork so that I can go and live nice, Bernie-free life please?"

"And if I were to refuse?"

"There are other lawyers."

"Then it leads one to wonder-"

"Oh, shut up you smug Swede. I'd spent more than my fair share of wallowing in misery and cheap Shiraz before I even met the tight-arsed loud-mouth, let alone suffered marriage to her."

"Twice."

"I thought I'd told you to shut it?"

“Funny, I was just about to make a proposition.”

There was a clunk of glass on the bar table, muffled by a layer of sticky God-knows-what, “I’m listening.”

…

Marriage counselling.

The stick-up-his-arse Scandi wanted her to go to marriage counselling. And once was not enough, _oh no -_ it would be _far_ too easy to let a woman get on with destroying her liver in peace - the bastard had pulled strings to get the two of them in on a no expense spared six month session plan.

A total of twelve hours in an enclosed space with Berenice Wolf without so much as the memory of the sex that’d got them into this mess in the first place.

In other words, she reflected later, the rings under her eyes enough to make Raf give her a double without her having to ask, _it was going to be a long six months._  

And that, of course, would be the moment that said blonde disaster-waiting-to-happen decided to waltz into work, bare-faced and hair sticking up at all angles. Serena decided that she wasn’t even going to think about how crumpled that blouse was bound to be after a night screwed up in a heap on the floor.

But, of course, that woman being Bernie, nothing - not even the angry pink mark down her neck (Oh yes, don’t think she’d forgotten that one in a hurry) seemed to be able to make her look any less like it was perfected in front of a mirror, what some pretentious teenage know-it-all would no doubt call ‘effortless’.

“Ms Wolfe,” Serena hissed, resisting the urge to drag her off by the sleeve of her felt coat, “A word in my office, if you could?”

“Wait a minute, I’m just-”

“I swear to God, if that sentence turns out to have anything to do with that bloody mannequin you seem so fond of, I’m firing you: marriage or no marriage.”

Bernie put her hand around it’s tacky plastic shoulder, displaying a fine view of her ring – an equal shade of greening yellow, “Firstly, her name’s Fiona, she needs polishing or she’ll go dull and secondly, surely even you wouldn’t put your wife out of a job?”

“I swear Edward was never this irritating.”

“Hey!” She looked almost hurt, “I’ve been entirely faithful to you haven’t I?”

“Bernie, we’ve been married for twelve hours at most,” Serena retorted with a voice like sandpaper.

“And last time, if you remember. I made an excellent wife, I’ll have you know.”

“For a week and a half.”

“Twelve days actually – and I made you breakfast the morning after.”

“Coffee and leftover pizza, _pineapple pizza,_ to add insult to injury.”

“Leave a form in the suggestions box and I’ll strive to do better next time,” Bernie still hadn’t let go of the mannequin.

“There won’t be a next time,” Serena huffed, well and truly finished with the conversation. Bugger it, she thought, pretending not to hear Bernie’s shout of ‘love you too’ as she marched away, she’d deal with her tomorrow.

For now, there was a bubble bath and a very nice bottle of Prosecco with her name on it.

…

For all the madness of that Saturday morning, the week that followed was actually, disconcertingly, normal. No fights, no drunken accidents, no ambulances. When the most noteworthy event of the week was the binman starting to write his passive-aggressive notes on a different colour of post-it note, Serena had almost begun to think that perhaps, sham marriage aside, this whole getting-on-with-it thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

In fact, by the Friday that followed, Serena even almost managed to smile at the ghastly thing in her entrance hall.

Almost.

She’d get on to constructing her argument for why Fiona was in fact, on the appropriate plastic type for refuse collection later.

For now, she had a trespassing Swede to deal with.

“So, Henrik, what can I do for you?”

"Could you please cease informing your performers that I am in need of 'cheering up'. I am rather tiring of lending jackets to cold-looking girls in sequined underwear and it will not make me any more likely to pursue your divorce to Ms Campbell-Wolfe."

Serena had long since given up trying to convince him that the outfits her girls performed in were bespoke costume pieces, _thank you very much_ and just pouted, "Fine - it was worth a try,” She muttered to herself as she tried to remember what she’d set her office key-code.

“Oh, and Ms Campbell?” He called after her in a voice that gave no illusions that he was going to ask for a favour.

“Sounds expensive,” She turned on her heel, “What do you want?”

“Could you please order in another bottle of whiskey? I feel obliged to inform you that this one seems to have mysteriously depleted itself.”

The eyebrow rose on its own accord, “Has it now?”

“Quite.”

Serena smirked, “Well maybe if my useless lawyer didn’t drink half of my bar for breakfast-“

“Now, now, I trust that the woman who is famous for, Ms Wolfe tells me, her ability to consume an entire bottle of Shiraz in under ten minutes, is not suggesting that I should drink less?”

“We’re in Vegas, Henrik, everyone’s an alcoholic. Get on with my divorce and then I’ll see about setting my liver up on a date with something that doesn’t come in a bottle with a percentage on the back.”

“And the whiskey?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

…

The remainder of the day, again, ran like clockwork: the show went as well as could be expected (Morven even managing to make it through her sets without ripping her tights, for once), Bernie offered to lock up and, by two in the morning, Serena could quite happily head home, hailing the first cab that went past then pressing an extra Twenty’s tip into his palm when they arrived. Get the kids something, she’d said, smiling at the photograph taped haphazardly to the dashboard.

Not that she’d actually needed a cab, she realised later with a funny sense of wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn, marathon-running, twenty-minute-of-yoga-a-day superiority, she hadn’t had a thing to drink all night.

Maybe there could be a non-alcoholic in Vegas after all.

(Saturday night Shiraz excluded, of course).

So what if she had her first counselling session in the morning; how hard could it possibly turn out to be?

...

“So what would you say is causing this breakdown in communication in your marriage?” Half an hour in an Serena was sincerely considering taping the woman’s voice for a mosquito alarm. Honest to God, if there was ever a vocal equivalent to someone a scratching a record needle horizontally through vinyl, this was it.

Nothing has exactly helped the convenient mental slip-up that resulted in the man who schedules in twenty minutes a week to iron his socks forgetting to mention to little miss and _how does that make you feel_? here that she’s counselling a marriage younger than the yoghurt at the back of Serena’s fridge.

Still, at least there was that tiny kick of petty revenge, _you may be wasting my time - but I’m also wasting yours._

She imagined the woman going home to her 2.8 perfect little brown-haired children, tripping over the Labrador as she tells her almost-handsome husband about all the good work she’d done for this quirky little lesbian couple in the city. _How very quaint_. Maybe she’d give them a mention in the kind of book that lines the women’s issue shelf, How to fix your marriage-work balance in three easy steps. Perhaps they’d be a photo of the two of them strolling into work, Bernie’s hand positioned possessively in the dip of her waist, pressing into bare skin under the fabric of a blouse-

A sharp elbow jab into said waist was the ice-water shock that brought her back to reality. Dingy brown office. Noisy air-con. This God-damn woman staring at her like her College maths teacher when he’d caught her daydreaming,

“So, Serena, what do you think about that?”

She gave a sticky-sweet grin. If ever there was a face that begged to be dowsed in sparkling water.

“Yeah, yeah, course, yes, totally agree.”

“Hmm, assuming that Berenice here just asked you to describe the thing that you desire most out of your marriage… I’d say that this is the kind of communication breakdown that I was talking about, wouldn’t you?” She tilted her head, looking about as thoughtful as the dead fish she’d found floating at the top of the entrance-hall tank the week before. By virtue of having Berenice Wolfe as her handyman, it was probably still there.

“I believe that you owe your wife an apology.”

“Oh, for Christ’s-”

“This is an accepting space for all religions, faiths and philosophies. Blasphemy can severely damage the culture of open-mindedness needed to work through our problems.”

If she heard the quiet snort from the blonde mop in the corner, their all-knowing councillor didn’t comment. “Now, please, Serena, before we can build up the negative energies around that sort of speech.”

“Negative energies, what kind of-”

She froze at the sensation of a hand creeping up her back,

“I believe what Serena’s trying to say is that she finds it difficult after all this time to communicate with the ones that she loved the most,” Purred a voice like hot chocolate dripping down her ear canal, “My dear wife’s recent emotional constipation is the sole reason we’re here for your expert help. Because, you see, we do still love each other _very much_ \- and for the sake of the _children_ if nothing else, we decided that we had to work through this. Didn’t we,” There was a slight pause as the tips of her cold fingers edged the skin exposed by a loose shirt collar,

“ _Darling?_ ”


	2. Mojito On The Rocks

“Would anybody like to explain _why_ we appear to have been double booked with a children’s playgroup?”

“Serena, Bernie, take a seat,” Naomi beckoned them through the gates of rainbow coloured hell, “Today I thought we should focus on your roles as parents. If we could start with your children’s names? Serena?”

“Well- um-” She smiled, fanning herself with her hand, eyes darting about the room. _Lego bricks. Legolas? No, not a name. Brickaly? Imagine calling that from the bottom of the stairs when you’re late on the school run-_ “Bernie, assuming as you _chose_ their names, obviously, maybe this is more your question?”

“Oh, well wouldn’t be fair assuming that you did all the hard work of giving birth to them. All I did was put up with you for nine months. I mean, _yes_ , there was the small matter of that _wind_ problem you had carrying our second, then the time you wet yourself whilst we were-”  
“Yes,” Serena cut in, before they could discover where _that_ sentence was going to lead them, “Well I’m sure you would’ve been the same had you had Elton and…erm...  John.”

She saw Bernie nod out of the corner of her eye, “We’re… umm, big fans, you know- it’s a gay thing.”

“Right,” Naomi exhaled with a slight lift of the eyebrows, “Now we’ve got that down, how about we get started on our first exercise, yes?”

…

 

“So,” The voice began before Serena’d even had time to fumble around for the club’s master light switch. She’d give the Swedes one thing, they didn’t waste any time, did they? “Tell me, how _are_ Elton and John nowadays? You will send them my love when you pick them up from the childminder, won’t you?”

The flickering bar-light really wasn’t necessary to see that smug smirk.

“Don’t you people with ‘real jobs’ have paperwork to do? Last time I checked I don’t pay you to sit around drinking in the dark for dramatic effect.”

“Last time I checked, you don’t pay me at all.”

“And yet you’re still here. Must be my pretty face.”

He took a sip then immediately recoiled as if the honey-coloured concoction in the glass had just grown three heads. _Served him right, really_. “Care to explain what, exactly, has just taken over my decanter?”

“ _Your_ decanter?”

“Answer the question if you could, _Ms Campbell-Wolfe_.”

She rolled her eyes, “Fine, fine. We’ve got a stag do booking for tonight. My batman senses are telling me that they might be a titchy bit too tippled to tell one whiskey apart from another by the time they get here. And, if it happened to come into the hand of a stray Swede beforehand, perhaps it might persuade him to pick up hobbies outside of breaking and entering into other people’s bars.”

“It is hardly breaking and entering when the key is-”

Her handbag thudded as she hauled it up onto the bar, “Underneath Fiona, I know, so you can spare the time lecturing me on the wonder that is property insurance small print. Maybe you could go and use the spare time to go and construct a flat-pack cabinet or whatever it is you do for fun?”

“That won’t be necessary,” He said, showing no qualms in producing a hip-flask from his briefcase and pouring a glass of what looked _suspiciously_ like the remainder of the Scotch that’d gone walkabouts, “Remind me, whose choice of names were Elton and John, again?”

“Wait, we’ve got an Elton John tribute in tonight? Serena, that amazing!” Morven’s trademark squeak was accompanied by a slam of the door and an eye roll from Serena.

“Yes, hello Morven, perfect timing as usual.”

“You pay me from seven thirty, what other time would I get here?”

Her eyes drifted to the decidedly empty entrance rope by their very own accord, “You’d be surprised.”

“Oh, I passed Bernie on the way in-” She tilted her head to one side- “Come to think of it, she said something about Elton John too. Is it like that time we got booked up for an Elvis tribute meet…” She trailed off, “What?”

“You saw Bernie around here before nine O’clock?”

‘Well… Yeah, she’s always here before the show starts isn’t she?”

“Morven, Morven, Morven, Morven, you know as well as I do that Bernie doesn’t do _anything_ before the show starts unless it involves an IKEA bed set or free booze.”

“No… She really doesn't…”

“Would it be considered treason against her majesty to add that her motorbike has been present in the carpark before my own arrival every visit this week?”

“Shut up, Henrik.”

He huffed, “Yes Ma’am.”

…

She’d give the man something, he was right.

There, chained up to the overgrown oak in a crumbling corner or the car park where no one but Swedish lawyers who didn’t want to be spotted in a burlesque club ever went, was a shining silver motorbike with beefy rubber tires that looked suspiciously similar to pattern scorched into the thick black donut by the entrance. _Of course_ she drove a motorbike. They’d have to have serious conversations about stereotypes at some point.

Once she’d actually found them woman, that was.

“Bernie?” She tried, as if expecting her to suddenly materialise behind the tree, “Hello? Bernie?”

She tried behind the shed, the club’s generator, even the damned coffee shop next door, every time calling out and every time finding nothing. By the time she got around to the crumbling garage ( _Exciting investment opportunity her arse, but that was estate agents for you_ ), she’d already had two people stop to ask what her lost cat looked like. And, as tempting as the idea of putting up _Missing Dog_ posters with Bernie’s face on all over the neighbourhood was, she really didn't need to give her staff any more foolproof ‘evidence’ that they were dating.

Edging the door open did take some good old fashioned brute force but didn't creak and groan as much as one would suspect from an orange piece metal that supposedly hadn’t been touched for the fifteen years that she’d owned the building.

And sure enough, sulking at an old workbench that couldn’t’ve been held together by much more than the woodworm holding hands, was the likely culprit.

“Aha! There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you, you know.”

“No you weren't,” Serena would say that she just sounded like a moping teenager if her voice weren’t so… _damp_?

She tilted her head to one side, advancing by a single step, “Bernie? Talk to me.”

“Stop trying to be nice,” Bernie made no attempt to hide the sniff that came with it, “You’ll have your bouncer back in time to man the rope.”

“Which would be all fine and dandy if it were only my bouncer I was worried about,” She settled herself precariously on the very edge of the bench and wasn’t shooed away, “I’m your friend, Bernie - or I used to be. We always used to help each other back then, didn’t we?”

“This isn’t sixteen year old me running to you because I got tongued by Amelia Douglas at the back of the girls changing rooms.”

“Well, I should certainly hope you don’t go around kissing year elevens. So not lady troubles then?”

“You’re making it sound like I’ve got thrush.”

“Well _have_ you?” Serena tried in her best doctor voice.

The glare was as good as a verbal response.

“Okay, well that’s one thing crossed off the list, I suppose. Although, I dare say that the process of elimination method might not be the _quickest_ way of doing this.”

“You make it sound like I have any intention of telling you in the first place.”

“Please, I’ve got a Harvard business degree, I can get anything out of anyone. So what is it? Something to do with the army? Alex? Your sister contacted you?”

“Go- go back one.”

“Sorry, I didn't quite catch that, must be my old-lady hearing going again, what did you say?”

“You heard it.”

“I tend to find it helps to actually say it.”

“Now you're giving Naomi a run for her money.”

“You,” By the time she caught herself going to lie her fingers over Bernie’s, flat on the workbench, it was entirely too late. She froze. When her mental count got to five and Bernie still hadn’t ran, she wondered briefly if she had even noticed. _Best keep it there for now_ , she decided, _moving would only draw attention_ , “Still haven’t answered my question.”

“She- erm- she wanted to know where I was, the night we- err-”

“The night we got drunk and woke up looking like we’d been mauled by kinky vampires?”

You could almost hear the wet smile behind all that fringe, “That’s the one.”  

“That was nearly three weeks ago, why start an inquisition now?”

“I told her I was seeing a film with Morven- you know the one with the two ladies that meet in the department store?”

“You know damned right it’s called Carol. You’re not fooling me for a second, Berenice.”

“Yes, well… It came up in discussion the other day and obviously when Morven had no idea of the plot-” Her voice broke with a high-pitched yelp- “I think she’s leaving me, Serena. _‘Come back to me when you’ve got your life together_ ’, what does that even mean?”

“It means,” Her other hand slipped up and down her back and this time, Bernie relaxed into it, “That she’s just made the biggest mistake of her life. We’re going to get through this, you and me, just like old times.”

She pressed a kiss into blonde hair that smelt of old pine dust and it could’ve just as easily been that leggy teenager with big dreams an open smile that nestled her face just that little further into her shoulder.

 _Just like old times_.


	3. Whisky Straight Up

For all of her protests about the thing being on the verge of actually dissolving, in the week that followed, Serena found herself being drawn back to that old woodshed. It had a strange sort of charm to it. Good place to think. Quiet.

Sometimes, when the sun comes up early and that creaky old door is opened just enough to let the new light through, the dust turns to floating white feather framed by blue then purple then Shiraz red. 

There are no cars. There are no birds waking here, either. It seems like the rest of this strange, neon world, even the pigeons and squirrels have turned nocturnal. At half five in the morning, it is she who is the other creature and the sand and the sunrise is entirely her own.  

Call it actualisation or madness or just flat  _ sad _ but the distance can be nice, sometimes. 

Like she said,  _ quiet _ .    

“You know, we  _ really  _ have to stop meeting like this.”

Her head shoots up, ready with all the snarl and bite of a bloodhound for the three seconds it takes to catalogue the voice, slot it into the puzzle-piece shaped gap left by the shape of the figure in the doorway, blocking out the light. 

_ It was getting a bit bright in here anyway.  _

“Well,  _ yes _ , but you’ve got to consider, that would require you being seen with me in public.”

“I’m seen with you all the time!”

“I meant:  _ willingly _ .” 

She felt Bernie breathe a hot laugh into her clavicle, could imagine the little clear beads of 

condensation sitting on the skin and  _ Good God, had it suddenly got warm in here or was this another hot flush? _

“Serena?”

“Hm?”

“Your back’s all tense, I could fix that for you, if you- if you like?”

“No, no,” She found herself saying in a voice that she hadn't used since she was back in England, kindly refusing the last of the sponge fingers at a community coffee morning, “It’s just the um- the  _ disks  _ you see-”

“The disks in your back?”

“Yes, they er- they-” 

“Serena, I might not’ve actually  _ finished  _ that medicine degree but I do still have an incredible knack for telling when you’re lying to me- or anyone else, for that matter.”

“So tell me,  _ Doctor Wolfe _ ,” She began in pompous Queen-of-England voice watered down by the underlying giggle - but that might’ve been more to do with the end-of-shift-Shiraz, “What exactly do I do when I’m lying that you seem to have picked up on so expertly?”

“The ends of your nose flare up.” 

She let out a great guffawing laugh.  _ So maybe she was a little more tippled than she’d first thought.  _

“Honestly, what is it with you and my nose? Can you- can you remember when we were still at school-I don’t think you ever meant more than a week without tapping it in the middle of making a point, I thought you were mad!”

“Correction: you, missus-” Serena squawked at the sensation of cold hands digging into her waist, wriggling every which way to escape the merciless tickling- “Were adorable. How tall were you when you were sixteen again? Five foot-”

“Shush!”

“Come to think of it, didn’t I manage to fit you in my locker once?”

“You did no such thing!” She protested, conscious of her own nostrils giving her away now that it’d been pointed out to her. 

Funny, though, she could’ve sworn that Bernie’s eyes were set just an inch lower before the yelling of next door’s cat brought her thundering back to reality. 

“It’s getting late- well- early- either way, it’s going to get busy out here with all the people who’ve got  _ real jobs  _ going to work. What would you say about going back inside and having a drink? I hear the manageress is  _ very  _ understanding about out-of-hours drinks.”

She sighed, “Fine. Pour me something fruity and I’ll be with you in ten. Just let me lock up here first.” 

Bernie nodded, and if she muttered something ending with ‘wifey’ as she bounded away, well, Serena was in far too much of a state of shock to react. 

It wasn’t that she liked it.

Bernie looked back at she turned the corner, ruby-blonde hair bouncing off her shoulders, little bits of sunrise shining through. And at the epicentre of it all, for just a moment, radiated a boyish grin she hadn’t seen since they’d boarded that big white plane, giggling as they held hands into a new life. 

Nope. 

Not one bit. 

...

Ask Isaac Newton or any good drug addict and they’ll tell you:

_ What comes up must also come down _ .

Really, it only made sense that Serena should wake up feeling like she’d just got a head-massage from a meat tenderiser. 

“Bernie?” She groaned into the pillow.

“Hmmm.”

“I hate alcohol.”  

In her defence, Bernie did try to keep her chuckle as quiet as possible,

“I know, Serena, I know.”

Her mouth tasted like a small family of squirrels had crawled into it to die, “What the fuck did I  _ drink _ ?”

“A lot?”

“Not funny, Bernie, not funny.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve friend over right now but I can kick her out and put the kettle on if you need someone to hold the vomit bowl.” 

“Tempting, tempting - got to get there without hurling in the back of the taxi first, though.”

“Serena Campbell,” Came the return of the Doctor-Wolfe voice, the high pitch cackling at the edges, “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

“Not unless you've got something I don’t know about in your trousers, Ms Wolfe.” 

“Now that  _ would  _ be telling. So, am I getting a cup of coffee ready or are you going to spend this morning wallowing in self-pity?”

“Think it’s looking like the latter, if you don’t mind.” 

“In which case: enjoy.” 

Serena rolled her eyes and hung up the phone, something black and vaguely  _ shiny  _ catching in her kaleidoscope vision. 

It took a solid thirty seconds of patting down the bedside table before she could get a proper hold of it.

She squinted. 

A purse. 

_ Bernie’s purse _ .

Dammit. 

...

The woman who answered the door to Bernie’s flat was not beautiful. 

To say so would be almost an insult to her emancipation from the hair-sprayed, taped-together gelled-down sculpting that made beauty in the world that Serena had earned her fortune. Sequins. Stockings. Stilettos. 

The woman in front of her was wearing a plain white shirt. 

There was nothing clinical about her, after twenty five years in Vegas you start to develop a sixth sense for features sewn in under surgery light, like walking into a florist automatically spotting out the artifical flowers. 

The allure of this woman was altogether different, not twinkling city lights but a woodland, every element thrown together in an act of serendipity, each part unashamed of its right to be there. She had short brown hair, thick with tangles, an angular jaw and brown eyes slightly squinted, as if having only just adjusted to daylight. 

This woman may not have been beautiful but  _ by God _ , she was attractive. 

“Hello,” The voice sounded as if it should have rightfully come with a soft puff of smoke on an English morning, “Can I help you?” 

“Oh umm…” Serena studied the doorstep, suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that she’d gone and knocked on a stranger’s doorstep without so much as drafting an answer to that question, “I was just looking for Bernie, we work together you see. If you could you tell her Serena popped by that’d be great.” 

Now leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed, Mrs sex-on-legs titled her head; mouth, eyes and smile sliding to one side for comic effect, “You wouldn’t happen to be the Serena that she got drunk married to that time, would you?” 

“No?” Perhaps it was the octave, roughly comparable to Morven’s  _ there’s-a-spider-in-my-purse  _ squeal that gave Serena away but the nod she earned in return didn’t seem especially convinced. 

“ _ Right _ . Just a… different Serena who also happens to come from England… with a pixie cut… and is her boss?” 

_ Her boss.  _ So that was how it was, “I’ll get back to you on the last one when she actually turns up to work on time and gets rid of that God awful mannequin in my doorway.”

The woman smirked, “How about we start with telling her you’ve called?”

Serena plastered on her best pink smile, “No, don’t worry, it can wait until tomorrow morning.” 

“In which case, I suppose I’ll see you around, Serena.” 

“Until the next time...”

“It’s Alex - Bernie’ll’ve mentioned me. Did she say we’re getting back together now?”

This time, when she - no,  _ Alex  _ \- smiled, Serena felt the first twinges of a knee jerk reaction. In her fist.

_ Someone should write a paper on that _ . 

“Well… no… um- congratulations.”

“Cheers. I’ll pass it on.”

The door slammed and Serena had a sudden revelation of what it must sound like to physically stomp on a human heart. Repeatedly. In football boots. 

_ Whoever said lesbianism was easier could well and truly fuck off.  _


	4. Champangne, at last

Let it be know that Serena Wendy Campbell does not let  _ anyone  _ kick her in the heels and calmly walk away with all limbs intact. 

So the following Sunday, she spent an hour picking out her prettiest, girliest blouse (Barbie-vomit pink with an ivory lace collar), white trousers, and dabbing on makeup, light with the exception of the thick mascara clinging on to  _ butter-wouldn’t-melt  _ eyelashes that fluttered. She greeted Bernie at the door of her slightly crap apartment building, lead her to the car with a hand on the small of her back, drove her to the councillor’s office with Mozart’s violins seeping out of her radio. 

When they caught eyes in the wing mirror, they both smiled. 

Serena was never a naive woman. The fly had been circling the honey trap for a while now. Side glances, private smiles, the buzzing set something in her chest on edge long ago. But now, holding Bernie’s gaze for a moment longer than the Highway Safety Alliance probably would’ve liked, she knew that it had well and truly landed. Line. Hook. Sinker. The corner of her lip slipped up.  _ Scramble out of this one, Wolfe.  _

They drifted up the driveway into the only available space. No sooner had they stopped than Bernie dived out of the car to open her door, a hand waiting to help her. A hand which, even when they were both safely vertical half way through the carpark, refused to let go. Perhaps there was supposed to some kind of electromagnetic attraction there, a tingling of two sets of fingers weaved together in the soft morning sunlight. Serena almost felt sorry for her.

Perhaps it was that pity that lead to them being sat pressed together on Naomi’s too small sofa, still linked by the hand. 

“So,” There was an especially smug note in said woman’s voice, “I see you’ve made some progress whilst you’ve been away,” She gestured vaguely to the middle of the sofa, “Is hand holding something that always used to be a big part of your relationship before, or is this something all brand new?” 

Bernie made a dithering ‘umm’ noise, probably about to whittle out some limp response about  _ when we first fell in love all those years ago _ when, voice soft and eyes dropped, Serena pounced, “She used to hold my hand, all the time, back in England. You know,” The corner of her mouth twitched up, “She’d sneak out into my garden in the middle of the night with a torch. One flash, open the window, two flashes, come down. Then we’d sneak out for midnight drives in your crap old car whilst my housemate was asleep. You, me, box of fags and whatever booze you managed to convince the old perv in the corner shop to sell to you. God, I used to live for those nights. Remember that Bern, how  _ happy  _ you were, how happy you made me- before-” She choked on her own wobbly pitch, scrubbing frantically at her eye as if catching a teardrop- “I’m sorry, I must look frightful,” Now  _ that  _ probably wasn't a lie - the thing about cheap mascara is that it smudges  _ ever so easily _ , “It’s just thinking about-” 

Probably set into action by one of Naomi’s glares, Bernie’s hand touched lightly at her shoulder. Had she been stupid or younger or even simply less experienced with the way those dull brown eyes worked, Serena might’ve even taken the look of concern to be genuine. 

“And Serena, I know this is difficult to talk about, but what would you say is the main reason for the breakdown of your relationship with Berenice?”

“I- When we- It’s just-”

“It’s okay, you can take your time.”

“When we moved over here and opened up our little club together, I thought I must’ve been the luckiest woman on the planet. All the people on the planet to choose from and she’d picked  _ me _ . We got married a year later and then we had the kids and- and-”

“I don’t understand, Serena what’s this all-”

“Let her finish, Berenice.” 

Serena took a deep breath, then another, then another, until the elastic band around her lungs seemed to get the message that  _ this wasn’t real _ . 

She took the tissue that was offered and dabbed it gently against her eyes, ignoring the way that the mascara and office lighting had made them sting. 

“Until you cheated on me Bernie, until you walked out on me and shagged that woman instead. What was it? She’s thinner than I am? Does she earn more? I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought I meant something to you, Bern.”  

“And- and if you don’t mind me asking,” Even Naomi’s tone seemed to soften to match the new, grieving quiet, “How did that make you feel?”

She looked up into an expressionless face framed by tousles of knotted blonde. Frownless. Stag in the forest beautiful. Too far away to touch. 

Serena looked her in those big doe eyes and growled in a rumbling whisper, “Humiliated, Bernie, you’ve humiliated me.” 

It took precisely four heartbeats for Bernie to drop her hand and run out the door without so much as a mumbled  _ goodbye _ . 

She felt Naomi pushing something into her palm. 

Another tissue. It crumpled in her hand. 

Somehow, the tears came easier after that. 

…

“This is all your fault, you know.”

Hanssen gave her a questioning look over the ‘borrowed’ whiskey as if he’d been able to look at her, the state she was, dressed like a dodgy extra for Call the Midwife meets The Walking Dead with hair all over the place, face covered in watery grey and genuinely have no idea what she was on about. 

“Naomi, Henrik, the woman you actually  _ paid _ to shit-stir in a relationship you knew very well was cactus from the start. Why in God’s name you couldn’t have just signed on the bottom line like any real lawyer I don't know.” 

“Because,” She caught the glimmer of a silver band as he put down his glass and Serena realised that she hadn’t faintest clue who or what might have put it there, “I have done so before and, had I simply approved the divorce, I am fairly certain that I would find myself doing so again.” He seemed to catch her staring at his finger because suddenly, whatever he was going to say appeared to evaporate from his throat. “You needed to understand the consequences,” Was what he got out instead. 

“That ring…” said Serena before she’d fully processed what was coming out, “You’ve worn it before - but never when you’ve come straight from the office…”

“Ms Campbell, with all due respects, this is not about me.” 

“‘Ms Campbell’, wow, now I know I’m getting warm. That’s not just a signet ring, is it?”

“Serena-” 

“Oh, come on, you know all about my love life and I’m a nuptial and a badly placed banana skin away from being a ‘Four weddings and a funeral’ sequel. Whoever she is, can’t be much worse than that. Go on, at least tell me her name.”

He spoke like he were trying to throw up concrete, “His… name was Sebastian. An old friend, found again what now must be a number of years ago.”

“Was?”

“Opportunities, Serena, do not wait until they have all but passed you by.” 

She waited until the bar door had slammed behind him to reach for her phone, tap the first contact on auto dial. She wasn’t surprised when it went directly to voicemail. In fact, it was probably just what she bloody deserved, “Bernie, can you call back as soon as you get this? I think we need to talk.” 

...

“Look…” The blonde began, wringing her hands again. She’d have no skin left there at this rate, two burnt out holes between her finger and thumb, “About, um, Alex…” 

“Bernie, sorry, but can this wait just a moment longer? The bin man’s outside and I-” She shook her head- “Just let me go and tell him to go away. We’ll worry about the mannequin another day.” 

“Look, Serena, about that-”

They were both interrupted,as it happened, by said bin-man, peeking through the door-pane before, barging through, grinning,

“Mornin’ Bernie,”

“Ah… Fletch, I was just, um, talking to Ms Campbell here about-”

He clocked her with a tiny jump as the colour seemed to simply fall away from his face, “I’ll wait outside,” he muttered, the door slamming before she could ask him what the hell was going on.

As it was, she settled for looking to Bernie for answers instead.

“You know each other?”

“Yeah…” Bernie, now sheepishly twirled a scribbled on post-it around in those hands that never seemed to end. Hell, hands, legs, capacity to really piss someone off, everything about that woman seemed to go on forever nowadays (not that Serena had been looking, of course, that would be degrading, letching after her in that fitted black suit, little beads of sweat half-hidden by a loose collar and an undone tie just hanging around that neck of hers, all pale and smooth and pink in the shadow of stage lighting, that’d make her no better than the men who spent their time trying to get at her girls on stage, the dirty old-)

“Serena?”

She snapped her eyes up from where they’d been… umm.. looking at erm - she swallowed - something or… other.

“Anyway, as I was saying, Fiona here belonged to a friend of mine and then when Alex’s shop went bust, thought I might as well as have her crash here for a bit whilst Alex stayed with me. But then you saw her and there was the whole thing with the bin men and, have I ever told you that you’re really attractive when you’re annoyed? Well, I had a tenner going and Fletch up for a laugh, I mean, it couldn’t hurt… So I um-”

“Wait,” Serena wasn’t sure if she should pinch herself just in case she was passed out on the club floor and this was all some kind of Mojito-induced dream, “You’re saying that you not only let me believe that you and Alex were back together but actually paid my bin man not to do his job for the sole purpose of getting one up on the person who does happen to pay your wages - heaven knows why - just because you could?”

“I didn't know about-about the, um,  _ Alex  _ fiasco. We did have words though, most of them ending in ‘off’; I think we can safely say that ship’s sailed. We-we weren’t really ‘together’ together when you- erm-”

“And the thing in my doorway?”

“As for Fiana… Well…” As if it wasn’t bad enough to have just confessed to actively working to making a good proportion of the previous year a misery, Bernie seemed to be actually  _ enjoying  _ sauntering directly into her personal space now, that God-awful bottom lip of hers gently grasped between her teeth and good Lord, of course she just had to smell like Old Spice and sweat, as if her heart wasn’t about to give up on her before, what was it her doctor had said- she could feel Bernie’s breath on her face, the cocky sod was using breath spray as well,  _ Ambulance for Campbell please _ , they were so, so close, “When you put it like that…”

Then, she was tasting her.

Rapid. Hungry. Thoughtless.

She let herself drown in the strumming of fingers in her hair, the gentle pressure of a thigh pressed against a building drumbeat like alternate steps in a dance they both vaguely remembered. It was a kiss, yes, the same physical movement plastered everywhere here, from billboards to posters to grubby magazines but hell, this one deserved to be called music every bit as much as the violin song starting up in the next room across.

“Bernie?’

“Hm?”

“You’re still getting rid of that mannequin.” 

And just this once, Berenice Griselda  _ Campbell _ -Wolfe had absolutely nothing to say to argue back. 

In fact, Fiona was relocated in the following week, is now sitting pride of place in the kind of little boutique that still sells matching three-piece-suits and carries the eternal aroma of Werther's Originals and cats. 

She lives happily ever after.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's the writing goblin here! *waves* - just to say thank you very much for reading, I hope you've enjoyed the ride X

**Author's Note:**

> An absolutely ginormous thank you to Theseventeenstairs for Beta-ing and listening to my rambles!


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